Copywrite "Infobahn Magazine: The Magazine of Internet Culture,"
June 1995

Tinysex is Safe Sex

Copywrite Infobahn Magazine 1995

Logging in from home grants me privacy.
As I type my login name and password and watch the message-of-the-day text
with its mundane system updates scroll across my screen, I slip away from
the apartment around me in a way I wouldn't allow when I use the system
at work or at school. My digitized body, curled and pale as my fingers
fly across the keyboard to connect to FurryMUCK, stretches and glows as
the last letter of the password is entered. Oh, but what mood am I in?
The list of my characters beside me includes personalities that in many
cases in no way resemble my own. There's "Aileen," a sharp-tongued,
stand-offish young woman with a powerful ego and a denial of her own sexuality.
There's "Tacey," a forever-sixteen sexpot, blonde and perky,
filled with giggles and high school philosophy. There's "Tate,"
a slender young gay man with soft eyes and a Queen's snappish, flirty disposition.
There's "Kari," a young woman discovering her submissive side,
nude, and wearing wrist cuffs that advertise her exploration.

In cyberspace, I can become any one of these
personas at the tap of a key, like a perfect masquerade. FurryMUCK, with
its careful regulation to maintain a PG level in public areas for its younger
population, can be for the adults an oasis for sexual exploration. FurryMUCK,
a socially based real-time roleplaying system, is a TinyMUD, or text-based
virtual reality. MUD stands for 'Multi-User Dimension,' and these virtual
systems -- a hundred or more TinyMUDs net wide --provide central gathering
points for sometimes over hundreds of users internationally, all connecting
simultaneously in a real-time environment. (You may have heard of LambdaMOO,
a TinyMUD that has recently received much of the media's attention.) On
a TinyMUD, people meet and make friends, create social circles, build virtual
landscapes, and explore a world in which their biology is completely malleable.
On a TinyMUD, what you "see" you read. What you "do"
you write. The architecture and the objects around you are represented
by paragraphs of description authored by the users themselves. Text scrolls
by reading much like a novel in which you are participating as a main character.
The other characters are the people in the area with you, also contributing
to the flow of the story or experience with their own textually described
actions and dialogue. The result is a real-feeling virtual experience;
a simulation of reality, but magicked and surreal, and under the joint
control of the users.

Within this cyberspace, men and women can
in theory take a part of their sexuality and emphasize it without fear
of consequences. There is no HIV on FurryMUCK, no herpes, no unwanted pregnancies.
The physical side of sex is under your control. And this opens doors. I
can become this girl Kari, who is slender and young, with golden skin and
a winning smile, who wears no clothes, and who sleeps with the stranger
who meets her eyes and gruffly orders her to follow him. This drama would
never happen in my real life, but in this fiction-world of words I can
let my head do it, even my heart, and there's an off-switch by my hand
the whole time.

The sex on TinyMUDs is called TinySex. In
other virtual circles, terms like "netsex" and "cybersex"
describe the same thing. The characters involved meet, and an exchange
takes place -- sometimes romantically, sometimes intensely and without
thought. Then, perhaps, they make their way to a more private virtual location.
In Truth or Dare games on FurryMUCK, one of the favorite questions is to
ask which cranny of the virtual landscape is best for "TS." Answers
have ranged from "in the middle of a field of wildflowers," to
"flying over the ocean on the back of a dragon." The players
behind the characters author erotica describing their feelings. They compose
paragraphs describing the touches they offer, the kisses, the sounds and
smells. They write, read, and respond: sometimes one then the other, sometimes
at the same time, text scrolling up the screen filled with emotion and
action. With the right mindset, with focus, the TinySex can be hot, fast,
heavy, and deceitfully real.

How real does this exchange become to the
people involved? Sometimes TinySex can become TinyLove, and then TinyMarriage.
But even in this ethereal region for sexual exploration, where I have described
a haven from many of the problems "real" sex introduces, there
are those that claim TinyRape; illustrating specifically how "real
feeling" this virtual reality can become. Because what does it mean
to have such a concept exist when no actual, real-world violation can take
place? When a man in Minnesota types "tears your skirt and grabs at
your breast," what type of 'violation,' if any, has actually occured?
There are those that believe that despite the advantages of physical distance
from a potential molester, actual emotions will always be invested in the
life of your character or virtual self, and that a certain type of vulnerability,
then, can never be negated. There can be no perfect escape into cyberspace.
There are those on FurryMUCK, for example, who do not like to be touched.
According to them, they are not roleplaying or pretending this dislike.
They, themselves, the person typing, would become offended were I to type
a sentence describing my hand resting against their cheek. However, I haven't
actually touched them. I'm here in my apartment, they are there in the
computer lab. The sensation of my virtual hand, however metaphorical, has
crossed the boundry between the merely described, and the actually real.

Disbelievers might argue that people this
involved are just taking it all too seriously. But even for those people
who are only marginally involved in their virtual existence, it is possible
that someone typing "slaps your face" can produce a wincing emotional
pain, and that insults can hurt because a flipped up middle finger means
the same thing in words as it does in pictures. But what about those who
claim TinyRape? Rape is first and foremost an issue of violated consent.
When a man in Minnesota types "tears your skirt" or some other
intense or graphic obscenity, you can only reasonably feel disgust or offense.
Because TinyMUDs are only as real as you want them to be. At any moment
you can stop believing in what's happening around you, and it loses its
reality. Action on a TinyMUD has to be mutually consented to in order for
it to occur. If I type "throws a brick at you!" and you just
ignore it, what influence has my brick had on the agreed upon reality?
None. If I type "throws a brick at you!" and you type "catches
the brick!" you have consented to the existence of the brick, and
taken your own action in cooperation with the suggested reality. It is
the same with TinySex. If I type "tears off your shirt" and you
ignore me, or type "snaps her fingers and the shirt reappears,"
you have denied the reality I've tried to impose on you.

So there can be no rape on a TinyMUD. If
someone types "pushes you against the wall" I can respond with
"and she transforms into a butterfly and flits away" or I can
log out. While the haven produced by cyberspace can't protect you from
being emotionally effected by this person, at least it grants you an escape
from him -- a choice to ignore him, not acknowledge him; an off switch,
a quit command; the ability to transform into a butterfly and fly away.

While FurryMUCK is an oasis, and unique,
it is not a paradise. It is important to remember that sexual harassment
can still occur online. While people might decide to merely roleplay unwanted
pregnancy, STDs, or rape, as part of their character's lives, there are
actual RL (real life) threats to be aware of. These range from harrassers
claiming to know where you live in real life, to people who might bombard
you every time you log in with curses or lewd suggestions, their "spam"
making it impossible to read anything else as they force your screen to
scroll. For these problems the "wizards," or authority figures,
can take strong measures. FurryMUCK is a place in which you can be any
Body, with any kink or lack thereof, and feel only freedom to explore.
Although the majority of TinyMUDs are not sexual, specific ones have been
developed by BDSM organizations, by Gay and Lesbian groups, and by others,
to create healthy, supportive virtual environments for discovery and exploration
of sexuality, always emphasizing safety and creativity.